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This article is for disclosing companies and provides an overview of who can request your company to disclose through CDP, what information you may be asked to provide, and how to manage requests in the CDP Portal, including when you need to resubmit your questionnaire setup.

This article also provides guidance for parent and subsidiary companies reporting via CDP. CDP’s preferred approach is for parent companies to submit a consolidated response on behalf of their subsidiaries where appropriate.

Other than this article below, please refer to our Disclose Data page for more information on why and how to disclose, our question bank and available membership services.

Contents

What information you may be asked to disclose

The environmental issues and questions shown to your company depend on:

  • The Requesters that have requested your disclosure. See theGlossary section below, for more details on the Requester types.

  • The environmental issues they are requesting.

  • Your company's CDP-ACS activities and associated questionnaire sectors.

  • Wether you respond to the Full or SME questionnaire.

  • Your assessment of environmental risks.

For more information on the onboarding process and your questionnaire setup, including how CDP-ACS are selected and how environmental issues and questionnaire sector are assigned, please refer to the relevant sections within our Onboarding steps for Disclosers article.

Step 1: View requests

To view the Requesters and associated requests relevant to your organization, you will need to:

  1. Log in to theCDP Portal.

  2. Navigate to the ‘Requests’ page either from the left navigation sidebar or by selecting ‘View request >’ from the ‘Requests’ tile on your homepage.

  1. Review the ‘REQUESTED’ tab. This page includes: the Requester name, Requester type, the environmental issue requested and request date. For example:

Note: You can only respond to all requests collectively. It is not possible to respond to individual requests separately. If you require more information about specific request(s), please contact the Requester(s) directly or contact CDP Support using the ‘Contact Support’ button at the end of this article.

  1. Review additional tabs if visible:

    • The ‘FOR REVIEW’ tab: Contains requests received after the disclosure cycle has opened that require your review. Late requests can be sent by Requesters throughout the disclosure cycle.

    • The ‘SUBSIDIARIES’ tab: Displays requests received by subsidiaries linked to your company. For more information on CDP’s recommended approach to parent-subsidiary reporting, please see theParent-subsidiary reporting section below.

    • The ‘DELEGATED’ tab: Displays all requests that have been delegated from any subsidiary companies. If a subsidiary had a subsidiary of its own, the latter subsidiary’s requests would also move up to the overall parent. Please see theManage requests section below to understand this process.

  2. Please proceed to Step 2 below once you have reviewed all requests.

Step 2: Manage requests

Only Submission Leads can actively manage requests. To do this: 

  1. If you have not submitted your response already, proceed to the next instruction. If you have already submitted your response, select ‘Edit submission’ before making any changes to your list of requests. Once your changes are complete, you will need to resubmit your response.

  2. Manage your requests according to the tab:

    • ‘REQUESTED’: No action required.

    • ‘FOR REVIEW’: Accept or decline each request as required. You must accept any requests before the final response deadline. Requests that remain unaccepted after this date will expire automatically. Accepted requests will move to the ‘REQUESTED’ tab. Requesters will also be notified if a request is declined.

  • ‘SUBSIDIARIES’: Choose whether to merge requests for each subsidiary. Doing so indicates that your organization will respond on the subsidiary’s behalf. Merging requests will prevent the subsidiary from being able to respond to those requests themselves and if they had already started responding or already submitted their response, their progress/submission will be lost. A warning message will appear notifying the parent company of this.

  • ‘DELEGATED’: Review all requests that have been delegated from any subsidiary companies. If a subsidiary had a subsidiary of its own, the latter subsidiary’s requests would also move up to the overall parent.

  1. If your requests change after you have started your questionnaire, you must resubmit your questionnaire setup to ensure the correct Requesters, environmental issues and questionnaire content are displayed. Please proceed to Step 3 for further instructions.

Step 3: Re-submit questionnaire setup (if needed)

Disclosers with either the Submission Lead or Contributor role can re-submit the questionnaire setup. To do this:

  1. Log into your CDP Portal and navigate to the homepage.

  2. Choose the option that applies to your situation:

    • If you have received a new request or an existing request has been removed, your homepage will return to the onboarding view and the ‘Access your questionnaire’ tile will reappear. Select the ‘Set up questionnaire >’ from within the tile.

  • For all other scenarios, select ‘Edit questionnaire setup >’, located beneath the ‘Questionnaire KPI’ tile on your homepage. Confirm the action in the pop-up that appears.

  1. Review your questionnaire setup. In both scenarios above, you will then be taken to the ‘Set up your CDP questionnaire’ overview page. No changes are required in your previous selections, unless you wish to update these. Review the information displayed on each page of the setup process.

  2. Select ‘Submit’ to finalize the process.

Note: If you leave the questionnaire setup pages before submitting it, the Portal will remain in onboarding mode until the setup has been completed. To return to the ‘Questionnaire set up’ page, either:

  • Select ‘Set up questionnaire >’ from the ‘Access your questionnaire’ tile on the homepage, or

  • Navigate to and select ‘Questionnaire’ in the expandable navigation sidebar and then select ‘Set up questionnaire’.

 

Important: Resubmitting the questionnaire setup will not delete any questionnaire responses already entered. However, additional or sector-specific questions may change based on your updated setup.

Step 4: Proceed with onboarding and questionnaire response

Please refer to our other articles to continue with your reporting journey:

If your list of requests changes after you have submitted, please ensure that you resubmit your response.

Parent-subsidiary reporting

CDP’s preferred approach is for parent companies to submit a single consolidated response that includes data from all relevant subsidiaries, consistent with the reporting boundary for financial statements.

This approach aligns with the GHG Protocol and the International Sustainability Standards Board’s IFRS S2 requirements. This approach also allows the parent company complete oversight of all requests and reduces reporting burden by avoiding duplicate reporting by both parent and subsidiary companies.

However, parent companies may choose to disclose either a consolidated response on behalf of subsidiaries or allow their individual subsidiaries to independently respond. Parent companies can also decide which subsidiaries they will disclose on behalf of.


Before you merge subsidiary requests, please review the following impacts:

Action

Impact

Merge a subsidiary’s requests.

The subsidiary will no longer be able to respond independently to those requests.

The subsidiary has already started its response.

Any questionnaire data entered by the subsidiary will be lost.

Questionnaire setup has already been completed.

Questionnaire setup must be resubmitted.

A response has already been submitted.

The response must be reopened using ‘Edit submission’ before merging requests.

The subsidiary has subsidiary of its own.

Requests will be delegated to the ultimate parent company.


Important: Parent companies must have at least one active request of their own to access, view and manage subsidiary requests.

Glossary: Understanding different Requester types

Your company may be requested to disclose by one or more of the following Requester types. Understanding who is requesting your data can help you interpret why disclosure is being requested and how the data may be used.


Companies may receive one or more requests to provide information from:

  • Capital Market Signatories,

  • Customers (Supply Chain members),

  • Banks (Coporate Banking or Sustainable Suply Chain Financing members),

  • Private Markets members,

  • Initiatives they have committed to, including RE100.


Capital Market Signatories

The CDP Capital Markets Signatories request is supported by our global Capital Market Signatories, including over 540 financial institutions with US$110 trillion in assets. Companies requested by CDP Capital Markets Signatories are selected according to factors that include market capitalization and environmental impact.

Please visit our Letter to the Board page for the full list of companies requested by Capital Markets Signatories and to learn more about the nature of the request.


Supply Chain members

Customers may request disclosure through CDP’s Supply Chain program. CDP’s Supply Chain program works with companies to understand the impacts of climate change and nature across the supply chain, harnessing their collective purchasing power to encourage suppliers to measure and disclose environmental information.

Note: Supply Chain requests may trigger customer specific questions in your questionnaire.


Banks

Banks request disclosure directly from their clients and supply chains. CDP’s Corporate Banking program bridges the gap between banks and the real economy, including large buyers, their supply chain and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).


Private Markets members

The CDP Private Markets program facilitates engagement, disclosures and data-driven insights on private companies’ environmental management. Assets owners can engage with fund managers on best practice CDP disclosure at fund or portfolio level, while fund managers can engage individual portfolios on relevant environmental metrics from CDP.


RE100 Initiatives

RE100 member companies set a public goal to consume 100% renewable electricity in-line with the RE100 technical criteria by a target year.

Members report to the initiative annually. CDP manages the reporting process and produces RE100 annual disclosure reports based on this information.

Troubleshooting: Questionnaire not appearing

If your account is linked to your company and you can see active requests in the Requests page and REQUESTED tab, but the questionnaire is not accessible/available, first try resubmitting your questionnaire setup.

If the issue persist after resubmitting your questionnaire setup, please contact CDP Support via the Help Center. When raising a case through My Support, please choose the category ‘CDP Portal – System Support’ and the subcategory ‘CDP Portal Issues’ to ensure your case goes to the right team. You can also attach screenshots within the case.

For guidance on raising support case or creating a Help Center account, please refer to our How to raise a case in the CDP Help Center article.

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